No Comment - News Briefs - Brief Article

Progressive, The, Dec, 2000

Money Woes, I

From an article in the Idaho Mountain Express: "Do you often feel embarrassed, guilty, or ashamed of your wealth? Do you feel your wealth has denied you an opportunity to establish a sense of your own self worth? ... If so, you may be suffering from affluenza, a `disease' caused by having too much money that reduces the new, idle rich to jittery, ineffectual victims.... Fortunately for the sufferers, there are people like [Myra] Salzer who have recognized the problem and work hard to-provide a solution.... Her services aren't cheap, but what's $20,000 a year when you've got millions at stake?"

Singing for Your Parole

From a Reuters on-line article datelined Cincinnati, Ohio, on twenty-one local jail inmates who were sent into service as extras for a performance of Verdi's opera Aida: "Judge Norbert Nadel of the Hamilton County Common Pleas Court, head of the county's judicial corrections board, volunteered the inmates for the Cincinnati Opera Association production. Nadel said the time the inmates spent in rehearsals and the actual performance would be credited toward the community service hours their sentences require.... All the prisoners were in jail for nonviolent crimes connected with drug or alcohol abuse."

Gere's Dream Woman

From a Reuters on-line article datelined Washington, D.C., on actor Richard Gere's desire to be Madeleine Albright for a day: "`The first image that came was the Secretary of State,' Gere said when asked on ABC's Good Morning America program which woman he'd like to be. `I think she's in the middle of doing really important things right now.'"

Toying with Virginity

From an on-line Reuters article datelined Athens, Greece: "The so-called Virginity Meter purported to rank people's virginity based on a card's color reaction to having a finger pressed on it. The government said the card contained `unacceptable characterizations and could be dangerous to children's psyche."

Kiddie Strip-Search

The Detroit Free Press reports that the American Civil Liberties Union has filed suit in Michigan against Whitmore Lake school officials and Northfield Township police for strip-searching twenty-five high school students after a classmate reported a theft of $354: "The student had left the wallet in her backpack in the locker room while attending gym class.... The organization said acting principal Charmaine Balsillie ordered several teachers to strip-search all of the gym students. About twenty boys were taken one at a time to the shower room and ordered to remove their pants, lift their shirts, and drop their underwear .... When two Northfield Township officers arrived and learned that the boys had been searched, they told Balsillie to have the girls searched, too, to avoid charges of discrimination, the ACLU said. Five girls were ordered to stand in a circle in the locker room, pull down their shorts, and lift up their shirts so that the teachers could inspect them. The money was never found."

Money Woes, II

From an article in The New York Times on a seminar held at Christie's in Manhattan: "Four rich-kid specialists ... explained how to increase the odds that children who know they will never have to work for a living will turn out to be something other than pouty layabouts.... In practice, parents should insist that children do real work around the house, even if it means ordering servants to back off and let a child wash a dish, vacuum a rug, or clean a closet," the panel said.

Stereotypeface

From the House Industries display typography and art catalog, number 23, that features "The Bad Neighborhood" font kit: "The Bad Neighborhood features the infamous Crackhouse (the font everyone loves), eps clip-art, eight other beat-down typefaces, and a Bad Hood T-shirt." Other typeface names include: "House Arrest," "Burnt House," "Condemned House," and "Poorhouse," along with clip-art of automatic weapons, switchblades, pepper spray, and bullets.

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